Guinan, Stephen. We Are The Troopers: The Women of the Winningest Team in Pro Football History. New York: Hachette Books, 2022. Pp. vii + 288. Reviewed by Russ Crawford The stories of the pioneers of women’s tackle football are starting to make their way into print. Those who follow this site have had the chance…
Sharon Mazer. Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle. Second Edition. Jackson: University Press of Mississippi, 2020. Pp. 198. $30 paperback. Reviewed by Łukasz Muniowski From the beginning of her book, Professional Wrestling: Sport and Spectacle, which was originally published in 1998, Sharon Mazer makes it clear that she is just a tourist in the world of…
Friedman, Danielle. Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the World. New York: G.P. Putnam’s Sons. 270 pp. $27.00 Hardcover. Reviewed by Richard Ravalli Danielle Friedman provides a personalized, feminist look at women’s fitness history since the middle of the twentieth century in Let’s Get Physical: How Women Discovered Exercise and Reshaped the…
De la Cretaz, Britni and D’Arcangelo, Lyndsey. Hail Mary: The Rise and Fall of the National Women’s Football League. New York: Bold Type Books, 2021. Pp. vii, 290. Black and white photos, team list, bibliography, index. $28 hardcover. Reviewed by Russ Crawford In Hail Mary, de la Cretaz and D’Arcangelo have gathered fascinating stories of…
Steidinger, Joan. Stand Up and Shout Out. Women’s Fight for Equal Pay, Equal Rights, and Equal Opportunities in Sports.Lanham: Rowman & Littlefield Publishers, 2020. Pp. 232. $24.95 hardback and ebook. Reviewed by Łukasz Muniowski Judging by pure numbers, women’s participation in organized sports is at an all-time high. This was made possible due to Title IX,…
Friedman, Lester D. Sports Movies (Quick Takes: Movies and Popular Culture). New Brunswick: Rutgers University Press, 2020. Pp. 210. $ 17.95 paperback and ebook. Reviewed by Łukasz Muniowski Almost all of us consume professional sports indirectly, as a certain form of mediation is always involved when it comes to watching any type of athletic competition. It is…
Douglas, Andra. Black and Blue: Love, Sports, and the Art of Empowerment. New York: BookBaby, 2019. Pp. 310. $18 USD paperback. Reviewed by Russ Crawford Andra Douglas owned the New York Sharks, a women’s semi-professional football team, from 1999 to 2018. The Sharks began as a flag football team and won a national championship in that…
McClearen, Jennifer. Fighting Visibility: Sports Media and Female Athletes in the UFC. Urbana: The University of Illinois Press. 2021. Pp. 232. Acknowledgements, appendices, notes, references, index, introduction, photographs. $110 cloth, 24.95 paper, $14.95 ebook. Reviewed by Russ Crawford A common challenge that women’s sports faces is a lack of visibility. Numerous academic and popular books and…
Anderson, Sheldon. The Forgotten Legacy of Stella Walsh. Lanham, MD: Rowman & Littlefield, 2017. Pp. 227. Notes, bibliography, and index. $38.00 USD hardback. Reviewed by Robert Pruter On December 4, 1980, in a Polish-American neighborhood in Cleveland, Ohio, a 69 year old Polish immigrant woman–leaving a shop and returning to her car with red and…
Luther, Jessica and Kavitha A. Davidson. Loving Sports When They Don’t Love You Back: Dilemmas of the Modern Fan. Austin: University of Texas Press, 2020. Pp. 328. Notes & Index. $26.95 hardcover. Reviewed by Noah Cohan This being 2020, an annus horribilis if there ever was one, Earthlings—and especially Americans—have a lot to reconsider. Since…
Sport in American History 